Prof Shallcross on research and interventions for infection control in care homes on The Care Show

Prof Laura Shallcross appeared on “The Care Show”, highlighting the work of her VIVALDI Study team, and showing how they have bridged the gap between research and policy to improve wellbeing and health of care home residents.

The Covid-19 pandemic presented an exceptional opportunity to use research to inform policy. It is Laura and VIVALDI’s ambition to continue publishing and utilising practice-driven research to monitor all infections, not just Covid-19, and improve outcomes at scale in the 11,000 UK care homes, with a population of 400,000 residents.

“A lot of what was done in care homes was designed in the NHS, and care homes are not the same as hospitals. We need solutions that are tailored to people in care homes… placing their needs and values at the core of our work”, said Laura.

She was joined by Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England, who commended VIVALDI’s extraordinary and “trailblazing” work, and the many exciting opportunities that will arise from their research.

Both Laura and Martin stressed that infection control interventions need not be high cost or labour and time intensive. Care homes already put in place steps to reduce infection and VIVALDI’s work will help to scale up these best practice interventions across the UK.

“It’s an exciting time because we’ve got momentum. We learned how to do this work in the pandemic, so let’s keep doing it, expand, and increase the numbers of PhDs and practitioners in social care”, concluded Laura.

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 Find out more about the VIVALDI Study